Your Most Valuable Possession
by Dommi-chan
Summary: The companion to A Raindance Narrative. Spike is bored, so he thinks about life, love, and smoking.


Your Most Valuable Possession  
  
Another short character study, this one runs alongside "A Raindance Narrative." Same time period, and obviously the end of the series hasn't happened yet. Second person POV again, but this time it's Spike. Feedback goes to PapuruStar@aol.com. Hope you all like it, I think it stinks. Bebop belongs to Watanabe, Sunrise, Bandai, and 80,000 other people. Me? I'm not one of them...oh, and yes, this is named after the Ben Folds Five song. I love them, and so should you! Also, I now have a vanity fanfiction mailing list, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dommific. Please feel free to join in the fun!!  
  
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You hate the rain. You have since you can remember.   
  
Which is funny considering how lazy you are.  
  
In truth, it's because of your laziness that you hate the rain. You find yourself at loose ends and not being told to do this or that, so you end up laying about on the couch, thinking.  
  
You hate thinking, too.  
  
Not the kind of thinking that you typically find yourself doing-stuff like what's for dinner and why Ein insists on using the foot of your bed for his. The kind of thinking that you typically label as dangerous. It's, amazingly enough, almost always serious and meaningful. You actually get depressed when these thoughts come to life.  
  
You know. The thoughts about her.  
  
Well…wait. See this is where the problem is…you actually have to stop for a moment these days and say "which her" because where there once was only one, there is now two. One you yearn for and would give anything to find, and one you've never done anything but try to get rid of and keeps finding you.  
  
For some reason, something Mao once told you comes to mind. "Your most valuable possession, Spike, isn't your home or your family or even the Badge of the Red Dragons. It is your mind, your body, your soul, your past…everything that comprises the man you are today."  
  
You're not sure he was right, but it can't hurt to do a quick rundown.  
  
Your mind is fine, of course. A little worse for the wear, but the fact that you're not in an asylum speaks volumes.   
  
Your past? Constantly nipping at your heels as though you were Achilles. Granted, that is what you get for trying to outrun it. So you don't care too much.  
  
Your body? Scarred a bit to match the damage inside, there's been enough injury and blood loss that you walking around is a testament to modern medical science. You sleep, eat, breathe, walk, talk, sneeze, drink…you do everything that every other man your age does.  
  
Okay, almost everything.  
  
You think about the girl who got away and the girl who just won't leave. You're clueless about the one, while you know exactly where the other one is. Oh yes, you know exactly what she's doing. Sitting alone in that room of hers, listening to the rain and pretending not to think of you.   
  
You're not oblivious. You're not an idiot savant. You're aren't autistic. So of course you've noticed that she wants you. That you're always in her thoughts, just like how she has really bad timing and poor enough form to just worm her way into yours.  
  
It's not a private joke or even a denial that the chemistry is damn near perfect. Hell, it's why you act the way you do around her. Five years ago, you would have charmed your way into those ridiculous yellow shorts so quickly, neither of you would have known what was happening until it was all over and you both were shaking and seeing stars.  
  
Five years ago, there was no Julia.  
  
And really, that's the key, isn't it?  
  
In your more depressed moments, you have to wonder…how can you go on living as half of two people, but a whole of neither?  
  
Oh, but of course you forgot that one bit of Mao's speech. The soul.  
  
Assuming there is one, of course.  
  
Yes, the soul. Your soul has definitely seen better days. Not many, though, considering where you've been and where you're going and who you once were. It doesn't help that you've lost the better half of it, either.  
  
Not that you won't find her. You'll definitely find her, you know this. That isn't the problem. The problem is that you running to find her is also you running low on time. The problem is that you don't really have to run to her, you could run to a completely different time and place. The problem is that you've got someone here who could be that second half to your soul, that could be everything, but she's not because your blood sings for a memory and it can't be any other way. More to the point, you won't allow it to be any other way. You want the apparition, the Lady in the Lake, Persephone herself. You want to break your heart again and give yours to her because you just need her that much.  
  
You'll find her. One day, you'll find her. And then you will probably die soon afterwards. And you'll hurt Jet by leaving and you'll just destroy Faye and Ed will be a little sad but will go on. Everyone will go on except for you and your ghost-lover.  
  
This is definitely why you hate thinking. It makes you dwell on the inevitable. And that always makes you tired.  
  
It also makes you need a smoke. Good thing it's not raining anymore. 


End file.
